There were two Norman Conquests John Julius Norwich is the consummate historian of the 'other' one the conquest of Sicily When on Christmas Day 1130 Roger de Hauteville was crowned first King of Sicily the island entered a golden age Norman & Italian Greek & Arab Lombard Englishman & Jew all contributed to a culture that was as brilliant as it was cosmopolitan; & to an atmosphere of racial & religious toleration unparalleled in Europe But sixty-four years later to the day the sun set on the Sicilian Kingdom In this second volume of his history (The Normans in the South 1016-1130 is also in Faber Finds) Norwich describes the reigns of the grotesquely misnamed William the Bad & the Good & the bastard Tancred We read too of St Bernard magnetic but insufferable; of Adrian IV the only English Pope; of Richard the Lionheart (behaving abominably in Messina); & other notables This scintillating narrative history is also a superb traveller's guide listing every Norman building extant on Sicily